22.02.08: Poetry and Pottery

Deadlines are starting to loom, not just the completion of my thesis and practical work, but more imminent ones such as the Research Forum next Tuesday, where we have to give a short presentation on the current state of our research. We only have 15 to 20 minutes each, but it’s seems to take me a disproportionate amount of time to prepare for it. The audience is likely to be small, but will probably include staff from both the School of Applied Art and the Research Office.
The other deadline is the RSA Ceramic Futures competition interview to be held on the 11th March for which I am relying on the French company to complete the black tureen on time. Ideally, I should have it now so that it can be photographed and included in my presentation, and Martin Watmough from RapidformRCA has asked if it will be available next week for a visit he is having from the Vice-President of Z Corp. I have emailed and telephoned the company but feel a little in the dark, as I have no idea when it will be ready for collection. They have promised to complete it on time but I feel that last minute is almost the same as too late.
On a more positive note, a very successful glaze test came out of the kiln this week. The piece had been biscuit fired to 1140˚C then glazed with a metallic black glaze to the same temperature. Once the ‘bloom’ was polished off, the surface was just what I’m looking for, highly reflective and smooth, with no visible crazing.
The other enjoyable incident happened, surprisingly on the tube on Thursday. I spotted one of the Poems on the Underground, one by Elizabeth Cook called ‘Bowl’ that perfectly compliments my project.



‘Give me a bowl, wide
and shallow. Patient
to light as a landscape open
to the weight
of a deepening sky.’ *


Trying to memorise it on the tube literally and metaphorically transported me to another place [Liverpool St and home in Cumbria].

Earlier in the week I had seen another of the Poems on the Underground, this time called Maple Bridge. The first part is a translation by the poet Gary Snyder of a Tang dynasty poem, an almost haiku like description of night-time on the river, hearing the distant bell of a monastery. The accompanying poem is by the translator, set at the same location describing the scene in 2005.
Again, the effect is to transport the reader out of the uncomfortable physical confines of the tube to a place in the imagination. For me the discovery of a poem is always unexpected, as my mind is usually busy with ‘London’ thoughts, making the experience the more enjoyable for it.

* From ‘Bowl’ by Elizabeth Cook, published by Worple Press 2006

15.02.08 - Frankfurt

The past two weeks have passed very quickly, partly because I didn’t have my usual weekend at home but spent it in Frankfurt.
The week leading up to the trip is now a bit of a blur- what comes to mind are casting, glaze tests, writing and trying to organise the rapid prototyping of the glass blowing mould.
Friday morning soon came around and I made my way to Heathrow to meet Kathryn Hearn and her students from Central St. Martins. They organise a trip to Ambiente, the ceramics, glass and product design show each year. I thought I would join them to gain an idea of what is happening in Industrial ceramic design and to make contact with potential partners for the research fellowship.
The show is held at the enormous Messe, there are 9 or 10 halls, many of which have 5 floors! There are buses to take the thousands of visitors from one end to the other.
Over the 4 days of the show, I made contact with a number of firms, both glass and ceramic and have since followed up with emails giving some more information about the materials and technology I hope to work with next year.
Frankfurt is a pleasant enough place, the river running through the centre adds a bit of character to what I perceive may be a fairly boring financial centre, with an ever changing population of Messe visitors.
By Tuesday I was certainly ready to return to College and rest my aching feet.
The rest of the week went well, all practical stuff, including some hopeful glaze tests. The mirror black glaze is proving to be unreliable, with blisters appearing randomly. I had biscuit fired some fireclay casting slip, test pieces to 1080 and 1200 that were then glazed with the 2 black glazes and fired to 1140. The results are surprisingly good, considering the glaze has been taken 60 degrees higher than it is designed to go. I then re-fired 2 pieces that had been badly blistered, one of which needed some extra glaze and they came out better, but not perfect. I’ll try taking the temperature up a bit more. One of the glazes has an attractive speckle, which I need to remove if possible, so that was balled milled for a few hours today, whilst I went on a semi-useful photography course.
During the week I was invited to Limoges for a demonstration of treating and preparing the RP glass blowing mould for use. I would like to attend, but am worried about the amount of writing and making that still needs to be done.

01.02.08

This week has been spent working on a mixture of tasks.
I finished designing the glass moulds on Rhino 3D. They are intended for production on the Z Corp machine in RapidformRCA, then infiltrated and cured. They should then be able to comfortably withstand the heat of rotation blowing. I first designed a piece to test both the materials and how the glass would fit the form, but decided that it was more productive to design a piece that related directly to my project.







Last weekends unfinished writing on ‘Sensing the Container’ gave me plenty to think about during the week. I revisited the Anthony McCall exhibition at the Serpentine Gallery and saw a number of connections to my thoughts on form and formlessness. The light, projected through smoke across a darkened room takes on a material quality that is not dissimilar to water or a translucent liquid like the Darjeeling tea that I drink. Being able to enter the beam of light, and engage with it, dramatically changes the experience of the space. The boundaries of the gallery completely dissolve; there is virtually no sense of anything apart from the slowly shifting form of the projected light and the image it creates on the wall.












I managed to resurrect our research seminar group a.k.a. the Cake club for a meeting at the V&A on Thursday. We met to discuss the ‘Out of the Ordinary’ exhibition, then were treated to tea and cakes by Heike in the wonderful Morris room of the cafe. There were mixed feelings about the exhibition, it was not greeted with complete enthusiasm. The glasswork of Susan Collis for instance, was generally regarded as literal, leaving little for the imagination, whereas the intricately carved plants and flowers by Yoshihiro Suda were appreciated both for the dedication of achieving such a high level of craftsmanship and their poetic quality. For me the positive aspect of the exhibition is that it is labelled as ‘craft’. From my perspective of 20 plus years making functional pots and now having the luxury of time away from the studio to redefine my future practice, I am excited by the attempts to redefine and reposition ‘craft’.